Victor Davis Hanson: Trump Must Confront America’s Debt Crisis

We are on an unsustainable spending spree. People are talking about $40 trillion in two or three years. We're spending $1 billion a day in interest, and it's going to be almost impossible to pay that sum back, but government has shrunk dramatically with doves. All of this fraud we're seeing in California, Minnesota, Chicago, is reminding people that the entitlement state is way out of control. For the sake of the country, you're going to have to talk about it. Well, hello, ladies and hello, gentlemen. And welcome to Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. I'm Jack Fowlerly host. I get to ask Victor questions that I think you would ask. And actually, these are the questions you are asking. This is a victor's going on vacation episode one week a year. I'm not even a Jack. I had a week in the hospital where I didn't do anything. Yeah, that was a vacation. You're just HLO all week. So this episode is going up on Tuesday, August 25th. And the questions have been submitted by the good people at the Victor Davis Hanson Fan Club on Facebook. So we thank them for submitting these. And I'm weeding through in our last Victor. Victor is the Martin and Ely Anderson senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Wayna Marsh and Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. This podcast is finds its happy home at the Daily Signal, which is also home of Victor's other show Victor Davis Hanson in a few words. Countdown from when this show is out is ten days away from two weeks away from the actual publication date of the counter revolution, the fall and rise of Donald Trump and the Maca movement. Victor's I'm confident best seller. So I hope so. We'll see the other one was but Donald Trump may have. What's the word? I didn't cap. Stunted. I think I think he took a very brave decision to end the nuclear threat. But because it hasn't we haven't completely engaged or we haven't defined what victory is, we'll get into that later. Well, that's yeah, that'll be the first question. Yeah, okay, so we'll get into that later. Yeah, well later will be right after these important messages. Female athletes are being forced to compete against biological males. Sometimes without their consent or even their knowledge. In Washington high school sophomore, Cali Keeler was sexually assaulted on the wrestling mat during a tournament. Only afterward did she learn her opponent was a boy who identifies as a girl. With the help of alliance defending freedom, Cali is bravely suing the state over a policy that not only allows males to compete in girls high school sports but doesn't require schools to disclose that information to female athletes or their parents. Don't let schools put gender ideology over the safety of girls in sports. Your support today can help fight for Cali and other athletes like her. And for a limited time, your first gift to ADF will be doubled by a special match and grant. Well, funds last. Text Hanson to 83848 or go to join ADF.com/hanson to have your gift doubled. We are back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Hey, if you want to get that book, the book or any of Victor's books, go to Victor's website. The blade of Perseus, VictorHanson.com is the address and you will find the link there. September 8 is the pub date for the counter-revolution. So Victor, it was very good. In the 60,000 people on the Victor Davis Hanson fan club group and got a bunch of questions. I put it out there, "Hey, Victor's going away. Can you guys, we're going to record? We're not going to have any dead zone of shows. So I'm doing two with you. I know the great Sammy Winks doing two with you also." Anyway, here's a question from an old friend. Actually, she was a colleague of mine at Amphill, Carmen. Carmen S is a great lady. I think a very pressing question would just refer to it. What does Victor believe a true "win" looks like for the Iran War situation? He, you Victor, may have answered this in various stages of the war, but now that we are knowing these thugs, we'll never honor any written or verbal agreement. How do we end this thing that would accomplish all our most of our objectives? The latter part is a very good qualifier. There's a lot of gradations of victory. Obviously, you always want an unconditional surrender of victory, but in the long course of American history, we had a non-conditional surrender in World War II, and we had a non-conditional surrender during the Civil War. You can argue that we had more of an armassist or an arrangement in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. The Mexican War was a negotiated surrender. We won in Korea, but we weren't even negotiating that surrender. They never even recognized their defeat, and that is defined by the failure to absorb all of the Korean peninsula. I think you could argue that we won militarily on the battlefield due to our heroism of our troops in Vietnam, but we lost Vietnam. The same thing is true of Afghanistan. I'm trying to give you context with Iraq. We did remove Saddam Hussein, and we did install a consensual government. We did not, and we were not hit after 9/11 at the same magnitude. Those were all wins, but given the nature of the Iraqi government and its sheer components, I'm not sure that it was an unqualified success, and I'm sure that a lot of people, I don't know if it was worth the cost and blood and treasure as heroic as the soldiers were and how great their sacrifice was. So when we look at Iran, it's a little perplexing because there's so many freelancers. There's Jared Kushner and Whitkopf that are negotiating. There's JD, who's lending his analysis. There's Marco Rubio, who I think should have a monopoly on official communicates, and then there's Trump himself. But if I were to distill what our objectives were from all of that, it was not regime change, which was the only way that we would have an unconditional surrender, but would cost a lot more in blood and treasure than what we did. It would require a full scale effort by the United States, and I'm not sure that that would work without having ground troops. So that was willed off the table. So there was first of all, we're not going to let them have a nuclear weapon. I think right now you can make the argument since we can't trust their propaganda that say that they're not hurt at all, but we can talk to some people and we have satellite reconnaissance that their nuclear program has set back 10 to 15 years. And we know now from the missiles they launched at Diego Garcia and from things that they let slip and from analysis. They were probably within a few months of getting at least one or two nuclear weapons and they had the ability to put them on a missile and hit every European capital, probably within any another year. That's not on the table now. Another, the straight of our moves, we did not go there to keep the straight open because it was open, but now that during the transmigration of the war to negotiations to the war, I think we had seven iterations of war, talk, or talk, or we have to have the straight open. And that even that is ambiguous because in a year or two, it's going to be as far as the world economy goes, not, you know, not the import and export of commodities and durable goods from the countries inside the Gulf, but from the world economic point of view, 40% of the world will not be using the straight of our moves. Right now of the 20 million barrels, about 8 million are going out the Gulf of Oman or through the Red Sea, the Saudis, the UAE and the other Gulf consortia are talking about expanding the Gulf of Oman, expanding the Red Sea pipelines. So Syria and Turkey are talking about a pipeline from the oil fields all the way to the Mediterranean and the Israelis are talking with the Saudis that maybe somewhere around Hypha through Jordan, they could get a pipeline. If that were to be true, it wouldn't just make the straight irrelevant, but it would give importers so many more choices and it would probably be a lot more economical. But they wouldn't have to go all, you know, all the way through Suez from Europe necessarily and go into that Gulf and the first place they could just go right to the Mediterranean coast as they do now with North Africa, North African oil. what I'm getting at is Iran can talk all they want and they can say they're going to control the straight, they're not, but the straight's not going to be that important. So then the other goals that have been not official, but they have been hinted at, are to stop the ring of fire. And the ring of fire is Hezbollah Houthis and Hamas. I think everybody agrees, Jack, that Hamas is a paper tiger now. It's a subterranean ghost. It's not there's nothing that we can, there's nothing, there's nothing they can do. There's nothing, you can't pound them anymore. You can disarm them, but they are inert for a while. The Houthis, every once in a while, send a missile and then the Israelis take out their port or a key utility and they're not going to do much because Iran, all the money and weaponry have been cut off to them. The thing that we're also talking about now, and I think to conclude, I think we're witnessing the greatest economic dash military strangulation of a country we've seen in about 30 years. We're embargoing it, we're sanctioning it, we're isolating it, we're blockading it, we're debanking it, we're freezing it. Now I know that they can cheat and they're master cheaters, but that being said, they're losing about four or five hundred million dollars in economic output or GDP or income, however we define it every day. And they're saying the Wall Street Journal just laps it up and says, well, they're rearming, they're factories are, no, they're not, not to this degree necessary to recoup, you know, a half century, half trillion dollar investment that's been pretty much destroyed. So bottom line, if we had to go home and we're not, we would say that we just, we crushed them. It wasn't a Libya, it wasn't even a Serbia, we did, we've done more damage to that country than we did to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Libya, to Serbia, to any country since the Korean War or since the Vietnam War. And where are we now? I think Donald Trump has got, as I said earlier, an Anaconda Civil War strategy of the North is going to squeeze them as much as he can. And as they start to pop, they will send off missiles or drones from their vestigial fleet and he'll hit them hard. And he hopes that will continue to, that, that containment will continue to the midterms. I would expect an October surprise by the Iranians to try something to get in the headlines and lose Trump the election. And then after the election, I would think that the Israelis and the Americans would hit them very hard for the slightest provocation. And that would be pretty, pretty devastating. Meanwhile, there's the wild card, no one talks about, and that's what are the Iranian people going to do? When they can't even afford fruit, they can't afford milk, they can't afford electricity, they can't afford gas, they can't afford diesel, they can't afford carcin or natural gas. It's all scarce. So they're either going to retaliate against the regime and they'll, there'll be more massacres or they will just keep quiet, but they're not going to be active economically as, and fully generating wealth. They can't do it anymore, given what we've done to them. Is that victory? I don't know, but I think in our time for this particular mission, the, the mission was they're very close to getting a bomb, stop them and stop them in a cost of benefit analysis, tragic, we lost 17 dead, but the bigger picture to attack a country with 93 million people that was the bully of the entire Middle East and did defang it with losing three or four planes, 17 tragically soldiers, but about $55 billion, but I don't think anybody thought you could, I mean, take that versus a trillion dollars in Iraq and probably two trillion in Afghanistan over 20 years. Well, Victor, I'm going to have a follow kind of related follow up on that, but first to our listeners and our viewers, if you've studied enough history, you start to see a pattern nations don't lose their way overnight. They drift through debt and division until one day you realize the foundations you thought were permanent were never permanent at all. Today America is spending it levels once reserved for wartime. We've normalized deficits that would have stunned earlier generations and policymakers now debate whether the only path forward is more distortion, more intervention, more printing. But here's the historical truth, every society that pushed its currency beyond discipline eventually paid a price. The wise though, they never waited for a collapse they prepared for the correction, and that's why so many thoughtful Americans, especially those nearing retirement or in retirement, are reallocating part of their wealth into something that has outlasted every paper experiment in human history. Physical gold, not a speculation, but as insulation. Our reputation matters here at Victor Davis Hanson in his own words, which is why we are partnering with Allegiance Gold, a company distinguished by integrity, reliability, and an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau. For years, they've guided Americans through transparent education and long-standing relationships built on trust and right now they're extending a special liberty offer to our listeners and our viewers to help you get started with real gold. Whether your funds are in a retirement account or sitting in the bank, if you believe as we do that the best time to reinforce your position is before the storm becomes obvious call 844-790-9191-844-790-9191 or visit protectwithvictor.com that's 844-790-9191-844-790-9191-9191 or visit protectwithvictor.com History rewards those who take the long view and we thank the good people from Allegiance Gold for once again sponsoring Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Victor, I have a bunch of questions from Barry McDonald, but I'm going to leave his entree to them and I'll ask some of his other questions later, but here's one that's kind of related because you're just giving your council in a way, but how would you, how would Victor advise President Trump and I don't think that necessarily is advising him related to Iran and we know Victor that you are not pro-advising the President of the United States. No, so, but I think if there was an issue or a topic that you could give some council on what would it be? Well, he doesn't need my council. I'll say that first and I'm not a political a political that lives in Washington and I don't know the scuttle but and I don't know the personalities involved, but just as an outside observer, maybe from a historical point of view, he has his trademark is that he addresses things that no one wanted to address. Government, the size of government with Doge and for all the Doge controversies, government has shrunk dramatically by about 400,000 jobs. Nobody thought you could close a border. They didn't want to get near it. The wall was inert after bite. He stopped that and he took a big hit with ice because it's one thing, it's easy to let in 12 million people, 10 million, scattered all over the United States. It's 500. It's very hard to find them and coerce them to go back because they had broken the U.S. law and he did that. So, and everybody talked about getting rid of the nuclear program or not allowing them to have a bomb and none of the prior seven presents did it. Okay, so in that context, I think he needs to talk about the last two years, something that is not popular, but he's not going to be running again. And that is we are on an unsustainable spending spree. We have 31 trillion. It's going to be geometric now. People are talking about 40 trillion dollars and two or three years. We're spending a billion dollars a day in interest and it's going to be almost impossible to pay that sum back if we don't do things. And what we have to do, we're going to have to take a hard look at Medicare and so security which are death. I mean, that is that's politically, political kryptonite, but you're going to have to talk about it. And the left will not, all the left will do is demagoguate. But for the sake of the country, you're going to have to look and I think they can, all of this fraud we're seeing in California, Minnesota, Chicago is reminding people that the entitlement state is way out of control. So I think they're going to have to just, I think if they could just say we're going to have a hiring freeze and a budget freeze. We're not going to spend any more than we did the year before and let inflation be the actual cut. I think that would be something that has to be addressed. The other thing is there isn't a multiracial, democracy of our size that works under tribalism. Indonesia doesn't work to the extent that it's a real democracy. India, I don't think works very well. If it worked, we wouldn't have hundreds of thousands of Indians waiting to come into this country. And I don't think Brazil works very well. And they all have caste systems and tribal systems and a multiplicity of languages and religion and everything. And so what I would suggest is that he's done a great job with DEI, but I would suggest what he does is say, "We're all one-people, Americanism, being an American is essential, not incidental, and we're not going to talk about tribalism or race anymore. And we're going to codify that and try to get legislation if he survives in midterms or through executive orders to expand on what he's done, because that'll kill a society, this fractionalism, sectarianism, tribalism. And it's got to stop. And these democratic socialists have substituted race for class, and all they talk about is race, race, race, and it's going to destroy the country. So that's another thing that I would advise him. As far as methodology and technique, I go back and forth. Of course, all of us say, "Why does he have to tweet it two in the morning?" Or, "Why does he have to make fun of Rob Reiner after he was killed?" Or, "Why does he have to do this or that?" And it doesn't do any good to say, "Well, they're worse. They tried to kill him." They didn't just talk about being insensitive or the used crude language. The left, really, the people who tried to kill him were all imbued with leftist ideology. And then the movie stars and the media had a rivalry about how best to imagine his death. And they do it all the time. So he's in the big leagues. It's not, you know, it's not Beanbowl. But that said, I think I would be a little quieter and don't say much about Iran. Just say, "This is what we're doing today." But when I say I'm ambiguous about that is because that he says things like, "I'll give you two examples." So Oman basically crossed him on the straight of our moves and other issues. He said, "Well, if they're going to do that, and they're in our way, we'll bomb Oman. We're not going to bomb Oman." It's an ally. He's more colorful language than that. Yes. Yes. Bomb the blank blank. And then he, South Korea, he had called up and said, you know, for the straight and other things, we're thinking of internationally, internationalizing. And you're a big importer of foreign crude oil and natural gas. Would you want to participate in Iran? Meaning, I think he was trying to imply you have ships. You could help keep up, open the straight. He wasn't asking for ground troops. I don't even think he was asking for air. And they said no. So then he said, "Well, North Korea has been very nice to me lately. And I'm going to pull out some troops from South Korea." You remember when he came in the first time? He said, "We've had 39,000 troops there for how long?" Well, we had a lot more. So he's basically saying, "75 years, we've protected you from this lunatic, your lunatic brother and country in the North. And we've lost 35,000 dead doing it in the Korean War. So all we ask of you is to participate, not in a dangerous combative way, but just keep, join a Western effort to keep the straight open. So free our ships so we can concentrate on the problem of Iran." And they said, "No." And under Biden, remember, he said, "We're not going to charge you anything." Trump was charging him $3 billion a year for our troops to be there and talked about going up, I guess, to $10 billion. But the way he said it, the way it was portrayed, Trump is crazy. One day he's saying he's going to attack Oman. The next thing he's pulling troops out of South Korea because they weren't nice to him. You see what I mean? And I think people can say, "Victor, we're over that. That's so, so then that so history, so what? We don't care anymore." What the left said, "I know that, but the key, his agenda depends on the independence." So when I get calls and stuff, it doesn't bother me to tell you the truth, not at all, but I get calls from family members, friends, and they'll say, "You know what? If I look at what Trump actually did in foreign policy, it's great, but why does he do this?" And then they go on a rant, right? So those are, it's a hard call, but does that mean that that tough, crude, often profane language shocks people? And it's an intensifier or a catalyst for his policy, or does it turn off people? I don't have that answer, but I think he might experiment by toning it down a little bit. Yeah, I was writing a very critical Obama, but if Obama said all that stuff, and Obama said stuff that was as bad or worse, but he did it soberly and judiciously. I just think, you know, I think we're, I don't know, we're exceptional to the degree of Greeks and the British, everybody thinks they're exceptional. Trayvon was, Trayvon was the son I never had, he would look, he looks like the son I never had, and you know, everybody knows that the police shoot on armed black men, and he did set, he sets up that was so incendiary, but he said it and he got away with it. And Trump says things that are not as quiet as incendiary, they're bombastic, but he doesn't, because they're harsh and he uses profanity. So I'm just talking about what's in his interest at this point. Well, this is the struggle of Ethan Edwards, right, from the searchers. It's an ancient, it's, it goes back to, as I said, Sophocles plays of Ajax and all the others. The blunt crude person that saves, that can solve problems, and then you ask, and then the, the townspeople or the people who are the beneficiaries at the point where they see success, they become hypersensitive and say, get out, get your six gun and get out of here and write off in a sucks sunset. Yeah. That, you know, that was kind of epitomized without magnificent seven scene where the old man says, well, they, if they could, if they knew how they would say thank you, but they, but, and then, I think it's Steve McQueen and Neil Brenner's, he said, we're going to, he said, they don't know how to say thank you. And he said, well, we're going to leave. And I think they're going to be happy to see us go. Right. Right. Yeah. After they'd saved them from Eli Wallick and everything. And that's, that's what Trump is. I keep going back to that tragic sense. Well, it's actually maybe a, a, a masculation or something that, that, that you have to admit that you need to be saved by somebody else. A lot of people can't, can't square that, you know, there's no big, big, they can't. And, you know, I'll give you one last example. John Kerry, should I stop there with John Kerry, in 2013, he, in between, when surfing and riding his race, racial bike and spandex, he gave a big talk about the era of the Monroe doctrine is over. And of those 30 nations, as I said, about 22 were communist or left wing. They had a term they called the pink tide, the Bolivian brotherhood league or something of that effect that Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela. And the, the two pillars of that communist effort, egg dawned by the Chinese and the Russians were Cuba and Venezuela. And to, even it got so bad that Panama invited a Chinese, the Hutchinson Chinese communist country company to go in there and run the entry and exits to the canal. And we weren't going to do anything. And Trump comes in and I'm going to, we write that canal treaty. That's not fair. And there's a bunch of commies there. If he doesn't watch out, we're going to give him, and we're going to start, if they send boats full of drugs toward North American, we're in a blow on them. Everybody said, oh, we wish we could have this sober and judicious John Kerry back. He was so diplomatic, he was so well dressed, you and then what's the now fast forward? Here we are. 32 nations in South Central and the Caribbean America. And I can only think of four that are anti-American communist. Paraguay, that little country, Paraguay has a crazy president, Nicaragua, Ortega, Brazil, blue and I guess we'd say Mexico, and Cuba, yes, five of them, if we count North American Mexico, and all the rest, 28 others have flipped. They're either pro-American, capitalist or they elected people who will take off as soon to that effect. How do you do that? He did that by saying there's now a Don Roe doctrine. We're going to help our friends and hurt our enemies and we're going to get those SOB commies out and allow you guys not to be bullied and you can have free elections but you don't have to worry about a bunch of Cuban infiltrators or Venezuelan money corrupting your systems. The United States isn't going to look the other way or secretly with a wink and nod support you as democratic socialists do. We're going to be there to help you get rid of these communists and have free elections and free market and it worked. It worked. Kerry could have never done that. Biden made it worse. They were almost rooting for the other team and he did that in two years, less than two years, Trump did. Everybody in South America said, "Wow, Trump's on our side. He's going to stop the communists. Maybe I can come out of the woodwork and vote." So anyway, well, maybe today had a six-country Canada, but that's not the end. So Victor, I have another question from Barry. But first, I want to tell our listeners and viewers about something. So American homeowners, the FBI has been warning about a type of real estate fraud called Title Theft and Your Equity. Your equity is the target. With just a forged signature, your ownership can be transferred out of your name and without protection in place, you're left with an emotional and financial nightmare. That's why you should visit Home Title Lock. So you can find out today if you're already a victim and protect yourself. Use the promo code Victor via CTOR at hometitelock.com to get a free Title History Report plus a free trial of their million-dollar trip lock protection. That's 24/7 monitoring, urgent alerts. And if you're a victim of fraud, they'll spend up to $1 million to fix it. That's hometitelock.com promo code Victor or use the link in the show notes. Don't be a victim. Protect your home equity today with Home Title Lock. And we thank the good people from Home Title Lock for sponsoring Victor Davis Hanson in his own word. So let me read here Barry McDonald's opening now. Listening to you, the great VDH brings me a tremendous amount of joy. Each episode is packed with knowledge and insights that are only found through VDH's wisdom. Discovering the podcast less than two years ago, I've listened to every episode. I haven't felt this enlightened since the days of Rush Limbaugh's radio show, RIP. So here's an interesting question. I think Victor, a lot of people are interested in Victor. And when you talk about growing up in your family, it just connects with people. And I'm going to lump that mindset in with this question. He, Barry is interested in your perspective on American life during the Cold War, nuclear bomb drills in school, communist propaganda. How real was the, what was it like to live in that moment? And how real was the threat, your assessment now politically militarily? Wasn't really a threat. What's your take on this? Well, there was a great bewilderment because we had one World War II. Our economy had dwarfed our GDP when the war ended. It was larger than the Axis and the Allies combined. So it was our fleet, by the way. And we had supplied 30% of the wherewithal along with Britain and Lenin's to Russia. And all of a sudden our ally, some people naively thought empowered. I mean, he was, they were empowered by the Roosevelt administration, maybe to an excessive degree. But nevertheless, they became our enemy. And they took over all these countries that we had, we had gone in. The Allies under Britain had gone into free Eastern Europe. That was Poland was attacked. And Czechoslovakia had been absorbed. And they ended up institutionalizing their subjugation to a totalitarian, totalitarian Russia. So that was a profound sense of disappointment, bewilderment, finger pointing, the McCarthy was all missing. He was crazy, but there were legitimate concerns. Jack and I have talked about that. There were communists in the State Department. There were communists at Yalta. There's no doubt about it. And then there was the Vietnam War was starting. So that was an intense period. There was the space race. There was a missile gap, all of that. And we were arming nuclear weapons of which we really didn't have a full knowledge of their nature. They were testing them like crazy, but we didn't really come close. There were some bombs lost through crashes. Kurtis O'May felt he had to test Russian defenses and he was flying over Russian territory with B-52s, B-58s, very low to see. So there were occasions that could have been dangerous. But there was only one. And I can remember it vividly. And that was October 1962. And I was 11. I was 9 years old. And we started having drills at Eric White's School about a nuclear alert. And that meant everybody assemble in the cafeteria. And do you have, everybody had to have a number that they gave to the, if they didn't have a phone at home, they were going to be given, you know, a ride to their home. I don't know what that would have done. We also had to get, we had those old type desk, you know, that was the chair and the desk were all one part. And they were wood. And they had ink wells in them still until they started to replace them. And we all had to get underneath, alert, alert, get underneath. Or we were told, if you couldn't get underneath, you had to get on a doorway. So the doorway would not collapse because it had a header supposedly and wouldn't collapse like the roof. And then I can remember a guy coming by our house, his name was Korky Livermore. And he said, I'm the agent for bomb shelters. And there's basically two types, Mr. Mrs. Hansen. There's the, the deluxe model. It's like a car salesman. And it is a concrete bunker, two feet of concrete with rebar. And we'll come out and excavate and it'll be 500 feet. And we'll make a scape tunnel and you can have beds and we can get all five of you in there. Or you can do the cheaper model. We'll go down about eight or nine feet and we'll get a big tank and he had a color brochure and that was a metal tank. So my dad being my dad said, well, I can excuse my language. I can build better than that out there. I'll just big a big hole. And so he thought about doing that. And then we went to the Fresno district fair and they had them on display, the bomb shelters. And they were trying to sell them. And they had a B-29 there. And we went and looked at it. And there was a heightened sense we were going to be at war. And John Kennedy, everybody admired him. I mean, they didn't know about his real life. He was kind of a scoundrel in many of his personal habits and behaviors. But he represented a young America that was confident and was going to block aid and force cruise ship to back off Sabre Rattle. We know now that it wasn't quite that simple that we took out Titan missiles that were pointed at Russia in Turkey and other places. So it was kind of a trade off, but that's the closest we came to it. Otherwise, it was just everything we did, the Russians opposed and everything they did, we opposed. And then suddenly Gorbachev came on the scene and the Russian economy and that was that. But growing up, you know, I was, it didn't happen. The fall, the wall fell in '89. So I can remember I was already 36 years old. So it was I don't remember anybody because we were out in the country and people talked about that a lot. They said during the October of 62, my dad and everybody'd say, well, we have the truck. Should we put food and a tent and we can just go up there and camp out in the sear as my mom was always so practical. And she said, and then what? We're going to be the cold and we need a toilet and we're going to we don't have a house up there or anything. So those are the types of conversations people had. And there was a, but I don't think it's fair to say that we, but baby boomers were suffering or we lived under a cloud of extinction or traumatized. I didn't feel traumatized. I had the happiest childhood I could imagine on this farm with my grant. What I remember both about those times was we were a multi-generational family. So a quarter mile away in the house I'm living now where my grandparents, my aunt, who was crippled, lived with them, my son. swish, a grandfather would come over all the time. Cousins, uncles, Thanksgiving was a madhouse of like 10 kids, 12 kids, 15 kids. It was wonderful. It really was. And we didn't think about the bomb then. Right. Do you remember there was a movie, Black and White movie with Ray Meland, and Jean Hagen, she played the, singing in the range, she was the, the obnoxious actor, so though she was terrific, but it was about Californians escaping to the country. I remember that movie. And then there was one on the beach, remember? I love that movie. Yeah. That is Gregory Peck and they have a gardener and Fred Astaire and his first dramatic role. And they get killed, I remember. And then there was one other episode. When Reagan was elected, he said that he was not going to contain, but defeat. They asked him what his strategy was in the Cold War, and he didn't say containment. He said victory, rollback, rollback, free, and everybody got scared. And then they put those SS 10 or 12 missiles into Eastern Europe, short range tactical nuclear weapons. And that broke a, a protocol, the Cold War, and all the Democrats were astonished when Reagan put nuclear-tip Pershing missiles in Germany and said, when you do that, we're going to do that. And of course, he went into Grenada and got rid of a communist government. And that scared everybody. And then all of a sudden, everybody should remember Hollywood, before they hated Donald Trump, they hated Ronald Reagan. Remember that movie the day after where the United States is hit by about 50 nuclear weapons, and then the family is, oh, the daughters, as I never got to have sexual relations, and the mothers says, oh, Jason Robards or a star of it. Yeah. That was such a huge off-end victory. It was. I can remember, I voted for John Anderson, but the fact that I didn't vote for Jimmy Carter and my Democratic family, people got really, I was the only one, and I liked Reagan. My parents who were Democrats liked Reagan, they just didn't vote for him, but I remember going to the supermarket in 1982 or late '81. And a guy came up to me that I went to high school and said, you should be ashamed yourself. It's people like you. And I said, what did I do? He said, well, you didn't vote against Reagan. And Reagan's going to get us all killed. And I said, no, he's not. But that, that was kind of a little Cuban missile crisis we, we duke. Yeah. That was, so I remember it was a Sunday night. ABC played it. And the country was gripped by that the day after you got to say again. And they were, remember that term? We heard nuclear winter. Nuclear winter. Yeah. Carl Sagan, barmed storm, the country, giving lectures that we were all going to freeze the death because the dust from the explosions would block out the sun for three to five years. That was before global warming. Now they'd probably say, wow, that's a good idea. But then it was always psychodrama. But it was reminded me of that scene in in Zulu where Jack Hawkins was playing the minister. And as he's leaving the British encampment, he's screaming, you're all going to die. You're all going to. Yeah. Yeah. That's the way that that, that, that was the attitude. Yeah. Well, Victor, I have a few more questions. So we have these shows are going to be a little shorter. But we're going to just take a break. And when we come back, I'll ask one or two more. And we'll come back right after these important messages. Every state is home to significant historic sites that tell the American story. But not every site is telling that story honestly and fairly. That's why the Heritage Foundation created the Heritage Guide to Historic Sites. This interactive guide equips American citizens with the tools they need to enjoy the sites that depict some of the greatest moments in our nation's history. Analyzing them for historical accuracy and provides resources for families or educators planning to visit from Mount Vernon to Independence Hall to Gettysburg and more. Americans deserve transparency and sites that steward our history faithfully deserve our gratitude. The Heritage Guide to Historic Sites invites every American to rediscover the places and stories that define our nation, whether it's across the country or in your backyard. Visit historicsites.heritage.org to start your adventure today. Victor Davis Hansen in his own words this episode, a vacation episode is up on August 25th. I guess, you know, this is a question from Rose. Rand, very simple, Victor. Well, I think maybe we'll just close on this. What are your views on data centers? Yeah, that's an, in this area that's agricultural and in electricity prices are high in California, the highest in the United States. So there's been just kind of a Pavlovian opposition to them because they say they take too much water either for the nuclear generation or to cool things down and the electricity is too high. Then the people from the AI industry say three things. After the initial water, so many gallons, they don't, we cycle the water and we can use gray water from sewage plants. And we, it's self-contained and it takes no more water and leakage or steam or whatever than an almond orchard of the same size. I've heard that so many times now in this area. And then, of course, we're happy to promise or to have it through legislation prohibited from affecting electricity rates. So they're counting on everything from electrical generation. I mean, Elon Musk thinks he can do the AI, he can solve the power needs by satellite solar of things in orbit. So things being huge satellites. And other people say we will have fusion in three years. It'll be many fusion reactors all over. I think there's already one that's going to operate by the end of the year and experimental one. Right. So I don't see those as problems. They will create jobs. It's kind of like the Amazon Walmart scarer in the 1990s and 2000 when they said, "Amazon is going to destroy Barnes and Noble." And it did. And you're not going to be able to go and have your latte and sit on the carpet and chant or something in the book section. That was sad. And then I have a lot of friends that I knew own bookstores, two or three of them. And some survived, some didn't. But I mean, this is part of the change. But more importantly, AI is in a different category. It's kind of like oil. When people say we don't want to drill oil in California, that de facto means you want to import people's oil from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. And you assume, because you believe in planet earth, that they can extract the oil more environmentally sound than you can. And they can't. No one can be safer or has more legislation to protect the environment than the United States. So when you say, "I'm not going to get my hands dirty with black goo," you're saying other people will do that. And the same holds true with AI. If we don't have a pre-eminence in it, the Chinese will, and we've seen from COVID, I mean, I don't support gain a function. I'm glad we outlawed it. But we had, Fauci thought he could control that, I guess, when he's secretly and illegally funneled money, probably to them, and instrumentation and personnel. But he couldn't. And the Chinese let loose a virus. Well, just imagine when they get AI, what they're going to do, either accidentally or on purpose. So I think it's absolutely critical that the United States maintain, and I just looked at a data thing today, as I said, Jack, of the 10 largest AI platforms in the world based on daily traffic, eight of them, or American. Then the top seven are all American. So what I'm saying is, we have already established a lead, and I don't think we would want to give that up to the Chinese. It would be too dangerous. And I can imagine what they're doing with it now and what they would be doing with it. And if we don't remain pre-eminent, I'm very scared of it. I think we can control it in a way that Chinese can't anyway. And even if we have we remain pre-eminent and artificial intelligence, it's still going to be a challenge because they're going to do stuff that we wouldn't do to get an advantage militarily as in some economic sphere. So cautiously optimistic, and it's incumbent upon the AI companies to go to these communities and say to them, we're going to have an AI plant and it's going to bring in this number of jobs and in this amount of GDP to the local economy and here's 20, 30 million dollars for the expansion of sewer and roads and infrastructure and we pledge that we will not use any more water than another industry and we won't raise the price of electricity and then I think it's a positive. I'm actually more a lot more worried about solar farms Jack because I agree. Yeah and windmill I drive to Palo Alto and I go down Manning Avenue and I saw about a hundred acres now it's thousands of acres of these panels and the way the west side works as it gradually you know has a slight increase in elevation that land drains better it doesn't have the selenium problem and that's really good land and it's thousands of acres of farmland have been taken out partly because Gavin Newsom doesn't want him to have any water so he cut off all the water to the farmers and then they sold to the state who paid them pretty well and you have these ugly solar farms for miles and the idea AI plant would take up just a small fraction of that acreage and there and we have a 110% capacity in California for daytime energy and we're I think we have about a 40% nighttime deficit and a cold day a cloudy day rainy day deficit and so and then I go over Pacheco pass and I see these ugly gigantic wind turbines the other day we were driving it was very windy I think there were 10 of them and only three were working you know so this this one when I came down there from Napa to all yeah you probably came to the ultimate pass ultimate yeah it seemed like there were well there were hundreds I know there there are there that's the biggest one in northern California yeah it was it was quite ugly the lie of all that Victor is that the the energy cost to make these solar solar fields and make these monstrous cuisine bird cuisine arts does not equal the energy they produce yeah what do you do with them when they're useless anymore it's another so catastrophe literally a few miles away from that solar plant we know the Monterey Shale formation has huge amounts of natural gas we know that the land is hilly and unformable and arid unlike the rich sand walking valley supplied by the central valley project in the state water project and so what I'm getting at is it would be so much easier to tap natural gas right there in the coast range above high five and build a 300 or 400 acre natural gas generation plant and use the water from one of the reservoirs you know build loss and then do this but so I'm not as worried I want I want the AI companies to make you know to abide by these the needs of the local community to for the infrastructure cost the electricity cost the water problem if they can meet that criteria then all power to them because we as a country cannot let other countries be ahead of us an AI it's too dangerous a technology it's like the arms race it be it's very similar to the nuclear arms race well I wonder if and we were closed but a byproduct you mentioned these nuclear little facilities being tested but if a byproduct of these data centers is an industry of really small portable new pollution industry with no with no waste no waste fusion not at least not like a vision and what that could do for the our economy and the world economies is is probably dramatic well Victor we know no listener viewer comments at the end of these vacation shows so I would want to thank you for answering these questions I want to thank the people from Victor Davis Hansen fan club for subbedding them we're going to record another episode of those questions but thanks again everyone for watching and viewing and we will be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in his own words bye bye thank you everybody for watching and viewing thank you for tuning in to the daily signal please like share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this you can also check out my own website at victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition